History as farce

In 2002 Israel had to stop the, so called, "Second Intifada" - a bloody, terror war, waged against all Israelis by suicidal Arab terrorists. Israel launched operation Defensive Shield in the Arab towns and cities of Judea and Samaria. The operation along with the construction of the Security Barrier were eventually successful. Suicide bombings were practically entirely stopped. During the operation a tough battle took place in the, so called, "refugee camp" - really, a town just like any other, of Jenin. The Arabs made a huge international media uproar, claiming a "genocidal massacre" took place in the town, with the IDF "slaughtering" some 500 unarmed people. A propaganda "documentary" was even made by a prominent, successful Israeli Arab actor Mohammad Bakri, and naturally became a hit in film festivals.

The UN took the cries of the "oppressed, occupied Palestinians" very seriously and launched an investigation. The results? The claims of "massacre" turned out to be "slightly" exaggerated; 52 Arabs, not 500, were killed, most of them gunmen. Israel lost 23 soldiers in that battle, if anyone cares.

In 2008 Israel had to stop an increasing barrage of rockets, fired at Israeli civilian population from the Gaza strip. Israel launched operation Cast Lead to block the terrorist shelling on its villages, towns and cities. With the highest death toll since The Six Day War, the media uproar was higher than ever. Yet another UN Fact Finding mission was erected. Its conclusions, known as The Goldstone Report, were an absolute PR catastrophe for Israel, suggesting both parties might be guilty of War Crimes and Crimes Against Humanity.

Alas, to the dismay of the Antisemites all over the world, Judge Richard Goldstone publicly retracted his report two years later, especially those parts vilifying Israel.

And now it's 2014, and it's rockets from Gaza again, this time with terror tunnels, and it's operation Protective Edge. It's seems the operation is already practically over, but the death toll is alredy higher than that of Cast Lead. The Arabs with the omnipresent help of the bleeding hearts both from Israel and outside of it, are already drafting their statements, collecting their "evidence" and preparing the ground busily for their next day in court.

More than 1,800 Gazans were killed by the time I was typing these lines. Leading news outlets from all over the world claim that more than 80% of these victims are civilians, which immediately paints Israel as a bloodthirsty, trigger-happy monster in the eyes of the everyman. The world media is quick to take the word of official Gazan bodies on the matter, bodies with fancy, important-sounding names like "The Gaza Health Ministry" and "Gazan police". Both of these bodies are under the jurisdiction of... You got it! Hamas!

Your local media is cheerfuly citing Hamas as a credible sourse! Terror group Hamas, in case you were wondering, isn't exactly known for its truthfullness and honesty.

"The Independent" is independent from objectivity.

Now, lets play along for a second with the "official" data from Gaza, and assume it is actually accurate.

First of all, even with the ratios presented by Hamas, Israel would do better than the apparent norm of warfare.

Now, if indeed the goal of Israel was to "slaughter as many Gazans" as the Arab-leftist coalition tries to convince you, then the IDF, with its advanced weapons and powerful building-destroying missiles is not doing a very good job at all, is it? With the operation continuing for almost a month now, Israel's weapons in densely populated areas (and we've all heard the shameless "Gaza - the most densely populated city in the world lie"!), could achieve this amount in less than a day. In fact, the numbers presented by Gaza unwittingly prove Israel's restraint and care for civilian life. Don't get me wrong, every civilian casualty is a tragedy, and every Israeli would agree with me. But, here you have a country that's breaking world records in the extremes it takes to prevent the loss of civilian life, against an enemy that deliberately uses civilians as human shields, that considers every civilian death a victory to parade in front of the cameras.

If we take for granted Hamas data, then the unfortunate death of some 1,440 civilian casualties in an entire month of fighting is an astonishing, admirable, achievement of humanity on the part of the IDF.

Now, lets look at some more credible data. Until the fighting isn't completely over, we won't have fully accurate data, of course, but some agencies have already tried to name the dead. And I'm not talking about Israeli sources, don't jump! First, there's Al Jazeera, the well-known Arabic news outlet, and then there's The Palestinian Centre For Human Rights. Al Jazeera belongs to Qatar, that among other terrorist groups also funds Hamas, and the The Palestinian Centre For Human Rights... well, is just that. Not exactly "Zionist propaganda mouthpieces", are they? Now if you use the futuristic, unbelieavable, undoubtedly unavailable to any self-respecting, liberal journalist, tool of Excel, like the excellent team of CAMERA did, on the casualties names and ages presented by these bodies, you will notice a number of interesting patterns.

A graph of the male fatalities by age. The x axis is age, the y axis is the number of fatalities at the corresponding age. Graph produced by www.camera.org.

For example that fascinating jump in the number of male casualties, when they reach 17 that goes strong all the way to 39, when statistically this demographic numbers roughly 16% of the strip's population. Female casualties number less than 10% of all casualties, while they're roughly half of Gazan population. Teens under 17 and children represent about 20% of casualties. A tragedy, no doubt, but it is important to remember that in reality kids make up almost half of the population of Gaza.

Statistics on Palestinian society taken from the 'Palestinians at the end of 2013' report, 

produced by the Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics. 

Now, while this analysis doesn't necessarily prove that the large chunk of young, able men of combat age are all terrorists, it certainly proves beyond a reasonable doubt Israel does NOT fire indescriminately and does NOT commit genocide. It also certainly raises way more than just a reasonable doubt on the "80% civilians" claim.

They say, history repeats itself, first as tragedy, second as farce. If The Goldstone Report was a tragedy (and for Israel, it certainly was), then this impending future International Investigation into "Israel's crimes" by all means will be a farce, and first and foremost a farce for the UN, who once again allowed itself to be fooled by the "Palestinian Cause".

If useful idiots would ever use their brains, they wouldn't have been useful idiots.

Use your brains! Don't be a useful idiot!

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